In a photolithography process in an electronic device fabrication process for, for example, a semiconductor or the like, a coating and developing apparatus or a unit apparatus, which performs coating and developing of a resist liquid on an object to be processed, such as a wafer, and an exposure apparatus which performs an exposure process on the object coated with the resist liquid are combined to execute an inline process.
In a case where an inline apparatus which performs such an inline process is an apparatus which processes objects to be processed in a single wafer processing manner, a plurality of objects, for example, twenty-five objects are retained as a unit in a cassette as a container, a plurality of such cassettes are prepared, and the objects are taken out from those cassettes one after another to be processed.
For each of the plurality of objects to be processed, a process condition in the inline apparatus (hereinafter called process recipe) is determined. Therefore, there may be case where plural objects to be processed with different process recipes are retained in a single cassette, and a case where objects to be processed with the same process recipe are dispersed over, and retained in, a plurality of cassettes.
When plural objects to be processed with different process recipes are retained in a single cassette, if the objects are processed from an end in a cassette in order cassette by cassette, the process recipes are changed frequently in the inline apparatus. This brings about a problem that it takes a considerable time to process all the objects.
For such a problem, Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. H7-283097 discloses a method of managing objects to be processed in a container as a unit, and scheduling the processing order accordingly.
That is, this method in Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. H7-283097 groups objects to be processed with the same process recipe, and systematically plans a process schedule group by group to optimize the process time for all the objects.
However, the method in Unexamined Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Publication No. H7-283097 performs optimization of the process time for a single processing apparatus, and may bring about the following problem for an inline apparatus constructed by a plurality of processing apparatuses, for example, two processing apparatuses, such as a coating and developing apparatus and an exposure apparatus.
Process recipes for the coating and developing apparatus and the exposure apparatus respective are set for an object to be processed. There is a case where the combination of the process recipe in the coating and developing apparatus and the process recipe in the exposure apparatus differ from each other depending on the object.
In this case, even if objects to be processed with the same process recipe are grouped in consideration of only the process recipe in the coating and developing apparatus, and the order of processing it is scheduled, the processing in the exposure apparatus may not be optimized.
That is, there is a possibility that changing process recipes occurs frequently in the processing in the exposure apparatus. The work of changing process recipes occurs frequently in the processing in the exposure apparatus requires a time for a work of changing a reticle (circuit pattern). This therefore results in that it takes a substantial time to complete processing of all the objects. When processing of the exposure apparatus alone precedes, on the other hand, changing process recipes is likely to occur frequently in the coating and developing apparatus.